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The Use of Contraries: Milton S Adaptation of Dialectic in Uparadise Lost"

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The Use of Contraries: Milton S Adaptation of Dialectic in Uparadise Lost The Use of Contraries: Milton s Adaptation of Dialectic in uParadise Lost" ELAINE B. SAFER IN THE "brief" epic Paradise Regained, Milton educates the reader by making him an indirect participant in a dialectic be• tween Christ and Satan, a dialectic in which Christ unmasks the "weak arguing and fallacious drift" (PR, III, 4)1 of the Adver• sary. I wish to suggest that in the "diffuse" epic Paradise Lost there are a variety of dialectical exchanges. This complex process enables the silent participant — the reader — to refine his vision so that he gradually can distinguish truth from falsehood, good from evil. It is a progression that Milton terms "knowledge in the making" (Areopagitica, YP, II, 554). In Paradise Lost, instead of two figures (like Christ and Satan in Paradise Regained) there are multiple voices that bring forth the basic oppositions in which the epic involves us. One set of assumptions is argued by Satan, his followers, and postlapsarian Adam and Eve before their repentance.2 Another is argued by the Father, the Son, Abdiel, the other good angels, prelapsarian Adam and Eve, and the epic "voice." The method uncovers oppositions as the "force for proof" that calls forth reason. It is a process of thinking in dichotomies, of examining "contraries, which are absolutely diagonally adverse to each other" (Artis Logicae, CM, XI, 281, 131 ).3 Milton's method can be compared to that used in the Platonic dialectic.4 Milton's stress on systematically analyzing contraries resembles Plato's belief that dialectical thinking is aroused by "things that impinge upon the senses together with their oppos- ites" (Republic, 524d).5 The process causes the reader to ad• vance from the darkness of falsity (like that in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave") to the light of truth. It is a movement from ig- 56 ELAINE B. SAFER norance to awareness, from our "senses dark" when we are at• tracted to Satanic views to our appreciation of right reason. Ru• dolf Hirzel describes the Platonic dialectic as a series of circles, each of which touches upon the other, while being complete in itself. Such levels of contraries are like acts in a drama that draw the reader in as an active participant.6 In order better to understand the reader's response to the dia• lectical process in Paradise Lost, this essay proposes to examine the Abdiel-Satan debate (at the close of Book V and the begin• ning of Book VI ), where Abdiel exposes the contraries in Satan's argument, and the contrasting debates in Heaven and Hell in which Milton treats separately the antithetical elements of the Abdiel-Satan dialogue. In the Platonic dialogues, Socrates uses the method of argu• ment by question and answer in order to reveal falsehood and progress toward the truth. For him the dialectical process con• sists of conversation between questioner and respondent (not necessarily a Sophist), who is expected to answer as briefly as possible.7 Socrates questions people who claim to have knowledge of moral terms, like Meno, whom he asks to define virtue. Soc• rates, as is his custom, points out contraries in the answer and makes suggestions that lead to new definitions and new ques• tions. For those who admire the dialectical process (like Alcibiades in the Symposium) Socrates is a wonderful piper — like the sa• tyr Marsyas. Such people find that Socratic questioning troubles their soul. They are forced to be concerned about moral issues. They feel embarrassed in his presence and yet fascinated by the beauty of the experience ("I think," says Alcibiades, "of those former admissions, and am ashamed" [Symposium, 216c] ). On the other hand, Sophists, who speak for fees and are primarily concerned with winning an argument, react differently to Soc• rates' constant prodding. In the Platonic dialogue the Sophist offers a definition that Socrates examines and questions. The definition is shown to be faulty; the Sophist attempts a second that is also unsuccessful; then a third or fourth, as Socrates con• tinues to expose each as ridiculous. "The antagonist," explains James Geddes, "if modest, withdraws as softly as he can: but, if MILTON'S ADAPTATION OF DIALECTIC 57 insolent and proud of his fame for eloquence, he turns in a fury . and pours forth all the ill-natured language he is master of."8 Milton captures the nature of the Sophist's upset and fury in Satan as he debates with the logical Abdiel: the fiend rails at Abdiel — "fly, ere evil intercept thy flight" (V, 871 ) ; he views Abdiel "with scornful eye askance" (VI, 149); and finally threatens combat — "receive / Thy merited reward, the first as• say I Of this right hand provok'd, since first that tongue / In- spir'd with contradiction durst oppose" (VI, 152-55). Milton has made Satan a caricature of Sophists like Protagoras, who artfully tries to rectify the multiple contradictions in his state• ments (Protagoras, 333e-34c), and Euthydemus and Dionyso- dorus, whose quibbles and distortions are easily disclosed as a useless game of tripping people: "Although one were to learn many or even all of such tricks, one would be not a whit the wiser as to the true state of the matters in hand" (Euthydemus, 278b). The Abdiel-Satan debate is a dramatic unit of adverse views. Satan expatiates on the meaning of justice and its loss at the moment of the exaltation of the Son. He moves from the point that the angels are "Equally free" to the false implication that they are all equal in merit, though "Orders and Degrees" exist (V, 792). He asserts: "and if not equal all, yet free, / Equally free" (V, 791-92). This brings him to the conclusion, "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchy over such as live by right I His equals, if in power and splendor less, / In freedom equal?" (V, 794-97)- The conclusion echoes his earlier false as• sertion that he "Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme / Above his equals" (I, 248-49). Satan distorts the facts to imply that the angels and the Son are equals. He works with semblances. He uses rhetorical tricks and loose analogies to prove that things resemble each other, when in fact they are contraries. Abdiel calmly responds to the Arch-fiend by questioning the meaning of injustice: "unjust thou say'st / Flatly unjust, to bind with Laws the free, / And equal over equals to let Reign" (V, 818-20). He inquires whether Satan counts himself "Equal to him begotten Son, by whom / As by his Word the mighty Father made / All things, ev'n thee" (V, 835-37). Satan dodges the 58 ELAINE B. SAFER direct question and responds by claiming that he and the angels are self-begot. He offers as proof the fact that he did not see his creation : "who saw / When this creation was? remember'st thou I Thy making" (V, 856-57). That Satan is self-begot and that he did not see this happening are mutually exclusive. They are "opposites" that "cannot be attributed to the same thing" (Artis Logicae, CM, XI, 111 ).° Early in the debate Satan asks whether the Son "can intro• duce J Law and Edict on us, who without law / Err not" (V, 797-99). Satan's assertion here of the absence of law in Heaven is contrary to his later appeal (when speaking to the fallen an• gels in Hell) to the "fixt Laws of Heav'n / [that] Did first create your Leader" (II, 18-19). The Fiend's statements here also are contradictory to a basic axiom of Heaven: freedom prevails through order, through obedience to law. In The Reason of Church Government Milton states: "God himselfe hath writ his imperiall decrees through the great provinces of heav'n." He points out that "discipline is . the very visible shape and image of vertue" (YP, I, 751-52). God's eternal laws bind God him• self.10 Abdiel exposes Satan's faulty argument: "Shalt thou give Law to God" (V, 822). The meaning of servitude and freedom in the dialogue be• comes increasingly important. Satan defines the encounter be• tween the faithful and his own followers as the combat of "Ser• vility with freedom" (VI, 169). Abdiel explains: "Unjustly thou deprav'st it with the name / Of Servitude to serve whom God ordains" (VI, 174-75). He contrasts Satan's definition with the true nature of servitude. "This is servitude, / To serve th' un• wise, or him who hath rebell'd / Against his worthier, as thine now serve thee, / Thyself not free, but to thyself enthrall'd" (VI, 178-81). Abdiel, by examining the contrast between service to God and servility, illuminates the nature of servitude, the inter• nal Hell to which Satan is subject. In the Abdiel-Satan debate, Satan exhibits pretenses, decep• tion, and lying, while Abdiel uses reason to expose contradiction in Satan's argument. As the Miltonic dialogue progresses, the reader becomes a silent participant in this communal mode of inquiry. Milton, in Artis Logicae, explains that logic has two MILTON'S ADAPTATION OF DIALECTIC 59 parts, "the invention of reasons or arguments and the disposition of them" (CM, XI, 21). In the disposition of ideas, when axi• oms or syllogisms are formed, truth or falsity is discovered (CM, XI, 309). "Whenever one opposite is affirmed the other is thereby denied" (CM, XI, 113). Similarly, "an axiom is true when it speaks as the thing is; false when it does the opposite" (CM, XI, 309). This is the logical method that Abdiel uses in debate with Satan.
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